


Pulling the Probabilities

by disco_vendetta (brinn)



Category: Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinn/pseuds/disco_vendetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christopher was not the first to decide that Mr. Flavian Temple was in dire need of a wife.  The staff of Chrestomanci Castle had been saying as much for years (although it was only after Flavian and Tacroy's making a strong case for Christopher's not being being completely and utterly horrible that they deigned to grace him with this opinion).  Christopher was fairly certain, however, that he was the first one to posit that that wife should be Tacroy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulling the Probabilities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iphianassa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphianassa/gifts).



Christopher was not the first to decide that Mr. Flavian Temple was in dire need of a wife. The staff of Chrestomanci Castle had been saying as much for years (although it was only after Flavian and Tacroy's making a strong case for Christopher's not being being completely and utterly horrible that they deigned to grace him with this opinion). Christopher was fairly certain, however, that he was the first one to posit that that wife should be Tacroy.

The idea (or the as-yet unconstructed pieces of an idea) first began to occur to him during a game of cricket - Christopher was quiet sure he did his very _best_ thinking during cricket - when Tacroy (Christopher continued to have great difficulty thinking of him "Mordecai Roberts," which seemed a terribly _guttural_ sort of name) quite unexpectedly took a cricket bat to the head. Miss Rosalie at been up and had just hit what promised to be a quite devastating run for the opposing team when she let her bat fly out behind her in her excitement, where it made right for the back of Tacroy's curly head. The game itself was entirely forgotten as both teams and the better part of the Castle staff all converged on Tacroy's limp body.

"Oh, _Mordecai_ ," Miss Rosalie wailed, sounding more exasperated than contrite about having almost killed a man by bludgeoning, "You really must pay _attention_ to where you are _bloody standing_." Christopher, sixteen and discovering a fresh appetite for the salacious, felt wicked with pleasure at hearing such language.

Tacroy was saved from having to respond when Flavian appeared, quite literally out of a nearby shrub, looked red and concerned and somehow deeply calm all at once, in that way Christopher was familiar with. Flavian often bore this same expression when Christopher had just done something incredibly wrong in his studies that almost resulted in the combustion of the entire Castle, which was rather frequently.

"Now, now, Rosalie," Flavian said calmly, "The man _is_ bleeding from the head a bit, let's give him a bit of breathing room."

"Marry me," Tacroy called out dreamily, apparently to a bird that was circling overhead, but both Miss Rosalie and Flavian Temple went decidedly pink at the proposal and there was suddenly a great deal of shushing and soothing noises on both their parts. Christopher looked vaguely at the whole scene and fingered the ring hanging from his neck thoughtfully.

"What are you thinking about?" Millie asked curiously at dinner, mouth full of mince pie. "Is the silver bothering you again?"

"No," he said, taking a bite of his own pie. "I was just thinking - do you think Mordecai ought to marry Mr. Temple?"

Jason (former boot boy, current serving staff, and burgeoning sorcerer) who was leaning over to re-fill Millie's glass made a coking sound and nearly upended the the serving bottle into Millie's lap. Millie simply looked thoughtfully from Tacroy, who was gesturing enthusiastically and brandishing her fork like a sword, over to Flavian, who was listening and grinning delightedly.

"You know, I think that's a rather good idea, Christopher," she said consideringly.

"Oh, now you've done it," Jason muttered, and ran off to spread the news to the entire staff.

 

+

 

The entire staff, as it happened, quite supported Christopher's proposition, and a great many plans were set into motion about how best to lock them in a linen closet together until they came to their senses, but they were all put on hold when Millie disappeared from boarding school in Switzerland without a trace.

 

+

 

"Christopher, please be sensible." Christopher was in no mood to be sensible. He was getting his lovely travel tweed damp with rain and found he didn't care a bit as he marched past the entreating Flavian, Tacroy hot on his heels as he made for the woods behind Chrestomanci Castle.

"Gabriel de Witt can go stuff himself," Christopher said with great feeling, heaving his rucksack up over a shoulder. "I'm going."

"Gabriel just - "

"Gabriel sent Millie to some awful cesspit of a boarding school and he made her _stay_ there even though she _said_ she didn't want to and now - "

"Christopher, maybe this isn't the best plan in the world, running off in the middle of the night in a rainstorm with a bag full of dinner jackets and no money," Tacroy ventured around Flavian's shoulder.

" _And now_ Millie's _lost_ in another world somewhere," Christopher barreled on, "probably in a completely different _series_ and I've just got to _find_ her."

"Now, look," Tacroy began again, when Flavian cut him off quite unexpectedly.

"No, Mordecai, upon further contemplation, I find I think Christopher is quiet right on this one, lone occasion. I myself quite understand the need to locate a lost, er…chum. Yes." If Christopher hadn't been so sick with dread (dread of them stopping him, dread of not finding Millie, dread of finding Millie but in some terrible state worse than death, nibbled on by dragons or run through by the Arm of Asheth), he might have thought that Flavian was behaving in a most un-Flavian way, and he would have found it _highly_ suspect.

"Millie's not just a _chum_ ," Christopher snarled, quite surprising himself. "Millie's my very best mate and she's a _goddess_ and I brought her to this world and I'm supposed to take _care_ of her and I'm going to find her no matter what, so you can try and stop me if you want, but even though I'd really rather not turn you both into gooseberry bushes, I _will_ if you won't let me go look for her." He was quite taken aback by this little outburst. He hadn't entirely known that Millie was his best mate until this very moment, but now he found he was quite firm in his conviction.

Flavian was looking at him very strangely, a bit as if he had swallowed a chicken bone at dinner and was trying not to draw attention to the fact lest he disturb the conversation. Tacroy, on the other hand, was not looking at Christopher at all. He was looking at Flavian in a quiet, intense, searching sort of way that made Christopher intensely uncomfortable to watch. He just wanted to _go_.

"Well, I guess that settles it, then," said Tacroy blandly, still looking at Flavian.

"Yes, quite," the other man agreed.

Christopher gave a sort of strangled whoop and ran off into the rain to find Millie. There was a sort of tugging sense in his torso that told him which way to go, which he wasn't entirely sure had to do with his witch sight. He caught a glimpse of Flavian hand pressing his cravat flat against his soft stomach as he waved goodbye over his shoulder that made him quite sure that Flavian knew exactly how he knew where to look. Tacroy was nowhere to be seen.

 _+_

Conrad Tesdinic, after being transplanted to Chrestomanci Castle after that business with Stallery in Series Seven, was quite perplexed as to why Christopher and Millie had their noses pressed against the library windows so they could get a proper view of the front lawns.

"We're watching to see is Mr. Temple has proposed to Mordecai yet," Millie informed him without so much as glancing away from the two figures strolling along the gravel paths.

"Why…?" Conrad asked dubiously. Christopher sighed dramatically and graced the other boy with a quick look over his shoulder.

"Because we want what's best for them, but they're really being quite bloody thick about realizing that they're clearly madly in love and ought to be married."

Conrad glanced from Christopher's annoyed face to Millie's entranced one and back again.

" _Mmm_ ," he said noncommittally, and that was his final word on the subject.

 

+

 

Christopher often found he did his best thinking during cricket games, and he found this was true even while watching format he front lawns and not actually thinking. He and Millie and Conrad and Jason and (of course) Flavian and Tacroy were assembled along with some of the other staff to watch the village team bowl out the opposition when a gust of wind sent Millie's hat flying. He was just about to conjure it back to her room when he happened to glance at her, which had a notably different effect than glances at Millie normally did.

It suddenly occurred to him that Millie was actually lovely - _quite_ lovely, really - and he desperately began wracking his brain to try and remember if she had always been that way or if it was a rather more recent occurrence, and if it was one that was likely to stick. He cast a sideways glance her way, looking his very vaguest, and tried to see if there was anything different about her at this particular moment than there had been in moments past. She was squinting in the sun, but even with her hand held up to shade her face, he could tell that her eyes were the same undecided blue as always. Her hair was sticking to her face a bit at the temples, but the rest was lit up by the sun and the wind was whipping it around into a proper rat's nest, none of which he would have ever thought much of one way or the other, but now he couldn't seem to think of anything except that it was quite exactly how Millie _should_ look, and that how Millie looked was really the best way for a girl to look, if you thought about it. He couldn't understand, now that he had it in mind, how anybody ever saw anything in girls whose faces were all hollows and hard, sharp-looking angles. No, better for a girl to have a round face, a _nice_ -looking face, like Millie's.

"Christopher?"

Yes. Yes, much better.

" _Christopher._ " He realized with a start that Millie was now looking at him a fond, but quite exasperated, expression he himself was quite familiar with but seldom saw directed at anyone else.

"Mmm?" he hummed distractedly, still being sure to look vaguely at a fixed point about her left ear.

"You've got that ridiculous expression on your face that you use when you think you're being _terribly_ subtle about some _terribly_ clever idea you've had and don't want anyone else to know. I can't for the life of me understand why you still think it works."

Christopher blinked several times and a very strong, Throgmorten sort of urge to hold very, very still for a full minute and then fuss with his lapels with greatest care for several intense moments before disappearing somewhere.

"I was just thinking," he said, "About wives." Tacroy made a high-pitched, choking sort of sound, a bit like a poorly made tea kettle. Conrad just look despairing and said nothing.

"I was thinking," he continued, turning to look in what he hope was a nonchalant-vague way towards Mr. Flavian, "About how it must be hard to pick a wife if you've just met someone, because it seems to take so long to figure out what people actually look like, or, er, actually _are_ like. I think it must take an inconveniently long time for one to puzzle out that one loves someone, so one should really only marry someone one knows quiet well. Someone one knows _best_ , really. Don't you agree, Millie?"

"Oh, quite," she agreed happily, clutching her skirts in one hand as the wind whipped them about, and beaming first at him and then at Tacroy.

It was just that he'd had the sudden inspiration that love - the marrying kind of love, not the other kinds - was like that. It took a while. And that people's qualities were like that, too, that they might take a terribly long time to notice if you weren't looking for them, and that maybe Tacroy and Mr. Flavian were rather like him and it simply hadn't occurred to them to look .

He wondered how long it had taken Flavian to notice that Tacroy's curly hair was the best sort of hair to have, or that people should, as a rule, laugh wide and open and wry, or for Tacroy to discover that soft faces like Flavian's (and Millie's) were preferable to all others, or how it took so _very_ much to get Flavian angry about _anything_ and how _nice_ that was, really.

"Don't you think?" Christopher asked, turning the full force of his vague stare at the two men.

"Um," said Tacroy.

"Er," replied Flavian.

 

+

 

Not surprisingly, Christopher learned that Mordecai Roberts was in the process of proposing to Flavian Temple when Millie's high-pitched scream of delight had the entire Castle staff running for the nearest window, while Millie and Christopher both teleported to the nearest shrub to watch up close, which everyone inside agreed was most unsporting of them.

Tacroy was down on one knee when they arrived, squished together and spitting out leaves and trying their very best to be secretive, which was rather difficult while hiding behind a large bush trimmed to look like a horse.

"But - but - " Flavian kept sputtering, "But Miss Rosalie! You and she - "

"Oh for - she's my best mate, you daft man. Has been since we were kids. That stupid bloody harp of hers, made us thick as thieves ever since we lived across the way."

"So you and she - "

"Are just _very_ good friends."

"And you - "

"Are asking you to marry me. And being kept waiting quite a while for a reply, which let me tell you, is not really helping my nerves."

And the next bit was rather hard to make out, what with Flavian's hands in Tacroy's curly hair and Tacroy half choking the life out of Flavian because he kept yanking on the silk cravat he'd grabbed him by. Millie sighed dreamily and rested her head on Christopher's shoulder and he was quite glad the need for secrecy kept her from informing how terribly _romantic_ it all was or how this exact thing had happened in one of her _Millie_ books when it suddenly struck him that he actually wasn't glad at all. That _actually_ , even though he _knew_ the sort of thing Millie was bound to say, he still wanted her to say it. Quite badly actually. And the thought of her ever _not_ saying it because she wasn't around again, like when she'd been at horrible _boarding school_ was quite unacceptable. And now that he thought about it, the sight of Tacroy trying to shove a gold ring onto Flavian's finger (which was apparently slightly thinner in Tacroy's adoring mind than it was in actuality) gave Christopher an idea about a good use for the ring housing his ninth life that was around his neck at readily at hand at this very moment.

"Say, Millie," he ventured, "I don't supposed you'd ma- "

" _Christopher Chant_ , if you attempt to upstage my engagement I will _never_ forgive you!" Flavian shouted in the general direction of the topiary. There was a distant roar of approval from the Castle, and Christopher huffed sulkily as Millie laughed helplessly into his shoulder.

Christopher had never been one for waiting.


End file.
